Garden for homeless bears fruit

The garden has old fruit trees as well as a variety of vegetables

A charity which is helping the homeless by revitalising an old Victorian kitchen garden is looking to expand the project after a successful 12 months.

Churches Action for the Homeless (CATH) took over the Balhary Walled Garden, near Alyth in Perthshire, in January.

Vulnerable people gain skills by working on the one-acre site and the food grown is used in the day centre.

CATH is now looking at producing jams and pickles from the garden and opening up to visitors.

When the charity took over the walled garden it was overgrown, fences were falling down and an old greenhouse had to be dismantled.

But the team of volunteers - most of whom are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless - have been working hard to restore it.

CATH chief executive Kath Critchley said: "We were fortunate to get our first harvest in August and October and in fact we still have leeks and beetroots in the ground.

"Also within the garden are some wonderful old historic fruit trees - apple trees, all manners of pears, and we've had one peach. There was a bit of a cordon around it and everybody who came to the garden was shown our one peach."

About 100 people a week are fed at CATH's day centre and about 16,000 hot meals are given out each year.

Volunteers learn horticultural and work-related skills

The food grown at the garden goes into those dinners.

But the volunteers also learn new skills.

Ms Critchley said: "Our people tend to come to us having been at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to getting a job, so it's the whole work ethic, it's the idea that you turn up at certain times, you do a day's work and you go home, and you do that repeatedly.

"It's also the horticultural skills - how do you plant a potato, how do you weed, how do you pick a raspberry?"

If the charity can raise the finances it hopes to have Balhary Preserves up and running in the next year and the garden open to visitors in about April.

It predicts a total of 25 full and part-time jobs will be created by the two ventures.

Ms Critchley believes visitors would love to pick some fruit and have a scone filled with Balhary Preserves in the garden.

"It's a fantastic space, we are surrounded by trees, we are sort of in the middle of nowhere and everybody who's been there absolutely falls in love with it," she said.